shouldazagged
Absent Comrade
I'm an elderly gent, seventy-five; but I try not to live in the past (mine was extremely checkered), and don't share some of my contemporaries' belief that nothing has been any damn good since 1945.
Still, I love the classics, like older Smith & Wesson revolvers and
the marvelous Warner Bothers cartoons of the 1940's and '50's. I make absolutely no apology for the fact that I still watch the latter when I can, and to this day can laugh out loud at a lot of them. Some of the Roadrunner stuff can practically put me on the deck.
The writing and direction were brilliant. In those two decades the animation was wonderful, though later it was done more cheaply and far less well. Carl Stalling and the others who scored and directed the music injected a lot of the humor with their quotes of old songs: some of them very old, some highly popular at the time, but all of them songs that we in the audience all knew. Those tunes are largely forgotten now, so young people watching the cartoons miss a lot of very sly work.
But the soul of the WB stuff was always my nominee for the most prolific and possibly the greatest entertainer of all time, that mad genius Mel Blanc. Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Taz, he voiced them all. He could do Bugs imitating the Tasmanian Devil in Bugs' own voice--try that sometime. He could sing beautifully in silly voices. He sang most if not all of the parts of the Sextet from "Lucia di Lammermoor" in character as several newly-dead, drunk cats
He was unbelievable.
When you consider that those cartoons are still being shown on TV, and making people laugh, all over the world; and that Blanc also did movies, radio and TV work, and even Army training cartoons, the number of people he entertained in life and still amuses long after his death is staggering. He worked with Jack Benny both on radio and television for many years ("Sue?"..."Si.")
So here's to the wonderful cartoons that came from the Warner Brothers shop in the '40's and '50's. They make the cheapo stuff kids watch today look pallid and uninteresting.
And here's to you, Mel Blanc, you splendid madman. You make me laugh even in my old age. I hope you and Jim Henson and Mauldin and maybe Walt Kelly are having a beer Somewhere. And I wish I could listen in.
Still, I love the classics, like older Smith & Wesson revolvers and
the marvelous Warner Bothers cartoons of the 1940's and '50's. I make absolutely no apology for the fact that I still watch the latter when I can, and to this day can laugh out loud at a lot of them. Some of the Roadrunner stuff can practically put me on the deck.
The writing and direction were brilliant. In those two decades the animation was wonderful, though later it was done more cheaply and far less well. Carl Stalling and the others who scored and directed the music injected a lot of the humor with their quotes of old songs: some of them very old, some highly popular at the time, but all of them songs that we in the audience all knew. Those tunes are largely forgotten now, so young people watching the cartoons miss a lot of very sly work.
But the soul of the WB stuff was always my nominee for the most prolific and possibly the greatest entertainer of all time, that mad genius Mel Blanc. Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Taz, he voiced them all. He could do Bugs imitating the Tasmanian Devil in Bugs' own voice--try that sometime. He could sing beautifully in silly voices. He sang most if not all of the parts of the Sextet from "Lucia di Lammermoor" in character as several newly-dead, drunk cats
He was unbelievable.
When you consider that those cartoons are still being shown on TV, and making people laugh, all over the world; and that Blanc also did movies, radio and TV work, and even Army training cartoons, the number of people he entertained in life and still amuses long after his death is staggering. He worked with Jack Benny both on radio and television for many years ("Sue?"..."Si.")
So here's to the wonderful cartoons that came from the Warner Brothers shop in the '40's and '50's. They make the cheapo stuff kids watch today look pallid and uninteresting.
And here's to you, Mel Blanc, you splendid madman. You make me laugh even in my old age. I hope you and Jim Henson and Mauldin and maybe Walt Kelly are having a beer Somewhere. And I wish I could listen in.
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